How Small Businesses Benefit from Blogging

It has become increasingly important for small businesses to build an online presence with their audience. If you’re a small business owner, you may be wondering what the benefits are of blogging for your company. Well, wonder no longer! Blogging is a cost-effective method of creating brand awareness and driving more traffic to your website by establishing yourself as a trustworthy and valuable source of information to your targeted demographic. Through regularly posted informative content, you can reach out to potential customers while also staying relevant to existing clients.
According to WordPress, over 409 million people view more than 22.2 billion blog pages each month. With so many people invested in reading them, creating a blog is your company’s opportunity to capitalize on their popularity and potentially generate more leads.

Why is blogging for my small business important?

There’s no need to contemplate any longer about whether or not blogging will be an asset to your business when the short answer is yes. If you are able to distinguish yourself from other companies by creating content that people think is informative or entertaining, it will help your blog to stand out from the rest.
You must show your authority on how knowledgeable you are about the subject matter and once people realize how well-versed you are on the topic, your website traffic will increase as people return to your site to see what else they can learn from you.
When trying to build your credibility, don’t forget these three tips:

Establish yourself as an industry expert.

How do you become an expert at something? Research, research and more research. You will not become a credible source to someone who is looking for help if you don’t have a firm grasp on what you’re writing about. Studying is how you become more informed and once you’ve done enough research, it’s time to put what you’ve learned into action.
It is much easier to provide a product or service when you actually believe and practice it yourself. For example, you can’t blog about how important it is for people to engage with their followers on different social media platforms if you never respond or have any type of open dialogue with your own followers. When you actually practice what you preach from the knowledge you gained during research, it gives you a better understanding of the subject matter at hand.
Now that you’ve applied what you learned, teach. All the information that you’ve acquired from studying can now also be useful to other people. When you blog, you make this information easily accessible to current and future customers.

Respond to any questions, comments or concerns.

So, now you’ve established yourself as a reliable source, but there are still people who question the information you have provided them with. Remember, don’t panic. It’s natural for people to be inquisitive. You should be open to any comments or questions they may have about the content you posted.
Also, remember it is crucial that you are timely and courteous with your responses. Even if you feel as though one of your readers may have been impolite during your interaction, it of the utmost importance to remain professional any time you communicate with someone who already is or could possibly become a customer.  

Be honest.

People want to know that you are being completely truthful in the content that you are creating. If a customer discovers that you were not completely honest with them, it can instantly damage your credibility.
You should never make up or use false information when writing your blog in order to drive more traffic to your website. If you reference other sources within one of your blogs, make sure that site is a credible industry leader and that people trust their information.

Optimize your blog.

SEO can be tricky for some bloggers, but it doesn’t have to be. Searching for keywords to utilize in your blog posts is extremely important for page optimization. Creating a list of relevant keywords to use in each post before you even begin writing is very helpful, but making sure to actively include those words throughout the blog is even better.
You should try to include these keywords in places like the title, meta descriptions, headings, introductory and conclusion paragraph. But, you also want to be cautious of overusing these keywords so much that it becomes obvious to your readers that you’re just stuffing your content with targeted words. This will also cause your post to be flagged by Google.
A couple tools that are helpful in finding keywords related to your blog topic is Moz and Google Adword Keyword Tool. Both of these sites are useful when trying to see what words are relevant to your blog post. You can also utilize these sites to see what words other bloggers are using to target their audience and generate more traffic for them.
When you write content that is beneficial to people who visit your site, they’ll return for more information and even share your work. That drives more traffic back to your site and your blog will receive a higher ranking on Google and naturally push your blog up to the top of the search engine results page.

Now is the time to start blogging.

Creating a blog for your small business starts with brainstorming topic ideas, researching, and then putting that knowledge into fruition. Blogging allows for a more versatile and cost-efficient method of promoting your brand. It can be a very powerful marketing tool to help take your business to the next level.

Learn how to write a blog post here! 

If you’re not quite convinced that content marketing via blogging is right for your business, reach out to us! We would happily assist you in providing more resources on how this cost-effective promotion will help your business thrive online. The key is to find your niche and stand out among the rest by creating content others find useful.

Still curious as to how blogging can help your brand?

Here are more resources to help you with blogging for your business.
Blog Strategies for Online Success
5 Easy Ways to Increase Website Visitor Engagement
Why Content Marketing Matters
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